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The folowing image was provided by Jerrin. To se more of her scans, visit her site here . I appreciate her allowing me to use this image!

A Few Steps Above the Rest


Anime brats, you all know the kind, especially if you watch sentai shows. The annoying kid that apparently serves no discernable purpose other than the creators felt there needed to be a kid in the series. Their stupid antics and meddlesome ways often leave a person wondering when the villain will eat the kid. There are often whole site devoted to the death of the small child.
Examples would be Jun (Yule) from Samurai Troopers (Ronin Warriors), Kiki from Saint Seiya, Rini (Chibi-Usa) and Chibi Chibi from Sailor Moon. Those are only the really noterious ones.
I've seen Trom referred to as the "kid" of Violinist of Hameln, which immediatly brings up the fear that he will fall into one of those sterotypes.
At first, Trom seems to have all the making of this type of character. He's a kid; he's brash; he looks up to the older members of the group, and there's even a bit of a sentai thing going on throughout the first half of the TV series. It would have been extremely easy for the writers to turn Trom into the standard anime brat just as they turned Flute into the standerd anime girl.

To my great relief, though, Trom does not fall into this mold. Why? Mainly because this kid has got a purpose. He's not just around to be cute and to annoy Raiel and Hamel.
He's around to fight villains (maybe not always competently), to protect Flute, to cause Sizer angst, to hurt Raiel ^^, and to get revenge on the Mazoku. Hey, he's even one of the five hopes! So he's not just hanging idly around to be kidnapped by the villains. Also, he's not as abysmally stupid as most anime brats. He's got the sense to be scared when, well the situation's scary. In my opinion, Trom's got more depth (for a junior high school manga character) the most kids you see in anime. Yes he's got spunk, but it's tempered by reality! This ability to show more than idiotic, nauseating cheerful spunk, really warmed me to him. He's a kid but you don't automatically want to feed him to Drum when he comes on the scene!

His anime incanation might be a little bit closer, however, the writers shy away from this by not over using the character. (actually they don't use him enough in my opnion). He comes off has an arrogant brat at first, but that perception quickly fade. He comes into his own when he must fight mouthpiece, and quickly grows out of the whiney brat stage.
Nor does he constantly cling to either Hamel or Raiel, telling them how wonderful they are, and how he's going to be just like them.
In the anime is reactions often come across as genuine. When he slasp Hamel's hat off, that doens't seem uneccessary or unrealistic. Not only that, but Trom is as interragal to the anime as his age would indicate. you don't see Trom, by luck defeating any monsters. he either has the skill or he doesn't. His fights remain real and thereofre he stays away from the dreaded sterotype, even in an anim, that sadly fell back on a few sterotypes in order to deal with the manga characters.

As a person who like kids in real life, it's nice to finally see one in an anime and manga that does not grate on mmy nerves, or apperently anyone else's. I've not met a person yet who hasn't warmed to Trom.

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